Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America. By Keith W ...

2 pages

Français

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America. By Keith W ...

edyxolec - Ncroker

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

2 pages

Français

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America. By Keith W ...

Informations

Publié par	edyxolec
Nombre de lectures	98
Langue	Français

Extrait

Book Reviews

723

skills, while others have had to struggle—Ger-

ald Ford, Carter, and George H. W. Bush.

Speechwriters many times have had access

to presidential polling, and speechwriting and

polling are part of the promotion of the image

and style of the modern presidency. Joe

McGinniss in

The Selling of the President,

1968

(1969) addressed the public relations

emphasis in the packaging of the “New

Nixon.” While Nixon won the presidency, he

took the country through the travail of the

Watergate scandal. In a media-conscious age,

there is still a need for presidents of character

and substance.

George H. Skau,

Emeritus

Bergen Community College

Paramus, New Jersey

Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook

America.

By Keith W. Olson. (Lawrence: Uni-

versity Press of Kansas, 2003. x, 220 pp.

Cloth, $35.00,

ISBN

0-7006-1250-5. Paper,

$15.95,

ISBN

0-7006-1251-3.)

Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the Press: A His-

torical Retrospective.

By Louis W. Liebovich.

(Westport: Praeger, 2003. xvi, 143 pp. $45.95,

ISBN

0-275-97915-6.)

Don’t look now, but a new round of anniver-

saries, “revelations,” and books covering Rich-

ard M. Nixon’s last crisis has arrived. In 2003,

as news programs marked the thirtieth anni-

versary of the Senate’s probe of the Watergate

break-in, former Nixon aide Jeb Stuart

Magruder dropped a bombshell: the president

himself had ordered the break-in at the Dem-

ocratic National Committee headquarters.

Now, as the first presidential resignation in

United States history turns thirty, two studies

promise fresh insights into this national trag-

edy.

Keith W. Olson’s

Watergate

is the better of

the two books. It is succinct and lively and apt

to find its way into courses on U.S. history

since 1945. The author’s thesis is plain: eigh-

teen months of disclosures of White House

misconduct fostered a national consensus in

favor of Nixon’s removal from office. In other

words, no partisan cabal drove Nixon from the

presidency. This argument is conventional but

compelling, for Olson has plumbed an array

Nixon’s chief supporters had, by mid-1974,

turned against him. In short, as charges of a

presidential cover-up surfaced, Nixon lost

public support. His unwillingness to surren-

der the White House tapes, his firing of Spe-

cial Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and his belated

release of partial transcripts of the tapes disil-

lusioned and then undermined his political

base. Release of the “smoking gun” tape, the

conversation of June 23, 1972, during which

Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H. R. Halde-

man, to enlist the Central Intelligence Agency

in thwarting the investigation of Watergate,

delivered the

coup de grâce.

Republican leaders

such as Barry Goldwater and right-leaning

newspapers such as the

Chicago Tribune

had,

by August 1974, joined with the opposition

party and the nation in demanding that

Nixon vacate the White House.

I have two caveats about this part—the

bulk—of

Watergate.

First, although a consen-

sus that Nixon ought to leave office had

emerged by mid-1974, newspaper editorials

remained divided over whether resignation or

impeachment was the most appropriate means

for removing him. Second, explorations in the

papers of prominent Republicans such as

Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh

Scott, and House Minority Leader John J.

Rhodes would have revealed greater party loy-

alty than Olson suggests. Republican leaders

privately agonized over Watergate but resisted,

especially in Scott’s case, breaking with the

president in public.

Olson’s concluding chapter is his best, for it

explains, in a most thoughtful way, why Wa-

tergate happened. The author places the scan-

dal in the context of the Cold War, a time

when the U.S. government clamped down on

dissent at home and attempted to rig elections

overseas. Olson, trying to be as fair as possible,

shows Nixon to be a product of his age. And

he takes Attorney General John Mitchell and

others at their word when they claimed that

reelecting the president over an antiwar Dem-

ocrat was crucial to advancing the national in-

terest. Yet the Nixon team proved unwilling or

unable to acknowledge that electoral skulldug-

gery abroad was one thing; dirty tricks on the

Univers
Ebooks
Livres audio
Presse
Podcasts
BD
Documents

Livre audio en ligne - Développement personnel Livre en ligne Tout le catalogue Tous les Intérêts

Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America. By Keith W ...

YouScribe

Le catalogue

Le service

Les conditions